I had a good morning today – I woke up and decided to go to a nearby diner for breakfast. A shiny, beautiful, silver boxcar diner with memorabilia, furniture, and dishes that create a fun little bubble of space that just feels different and enjoyable. Sara and I had gone to the diner several times over the 3 years we lived in our house together – it’s only a few miles away. I remember the first time we went, she had to get a picture of her old-timey coffee cup on the table to post on her Instagram account. The food is always good (even if a bit heavy in traditional diner fashion) and service is quick. The food Gods favored me this morning – I had no wait at this usually hopping diner and was able to pop right up to the counter to sit and eat there.
After I left the diner and was driving to my next destination, tears threatened to overtake me because I realized that this was now another place that had both “before” and “after” memories. I’ve now been there during a time in which Sara is no longer present on earth.
My next destination was to get my haircut. I was curious and looked up how fast hair grows, on average. About half an inch a month. After my haircut this morning, my hair is 2 to 2.5 inches long – that means that in another month to two months, after my next haircut, all the hair I had on my head when Sara was alive will have been replaced. How is that possible?
This then lead me to wonder, how long do cells in our body really last? How long do I have until there’s no longer any part of me at a cellular level that existed when Sara was alive? I don’t know why it matters, but I was curious. I found this page and this page, and was relieved to find out that unlike the commonly-posted adage that the human body replaces itself every 7-10 years, there are actually cells in our body that last our entire lifetimes, or at least much longer than that 7-10 year period. Yes, my red blood cells and skin cells would have all been replaced by now – with none of my skin cells being the specific ones that Sara touched directly, but as a whole I am still me, and there will always be parts of me that existed when she was alive on this earth.
I know all of this probably sounds strange, or you might be wondering why it matters or why I would spend energy looking up websites to figure this stuff out, but I can’t really explain it to you. All I can say is that grief can lead us to make what seem like strange connections sometimes, but I just feel like I need to go with it. I need to let my brain and my heart process my grief the way it needs to, within reason. If that means holding a tape measure up to my hair at 10:30am on a Saturday morning to see how long it is post-haircut, then so be it.